The Loose Ends Will Make Knots
by giveyourimmortalitytome
Summary: While Degrassi was in Paris, Zigmund Novak had the worst summer of his life. Of anyone's life. How did Zig become a boy no one could recognize?
1. Chapter 1

They put Zig into the Remedial Rubber Room for Deliquents, Misfits, and Assorted Assholes in Black the second week of the school year.

A janitor had found him in an empty chemistry lab when he should have been in French. Zig shoved the rubber tubes into his backpack and tried to play dumb, but it was pointless: Simpson dumped that bag out on his desk and asked him if he had anything to say for himself, anyway.

"We could call the police for this, Zig. Do you get that? You could be arrested."

"You wouldn't," Zig challenged him, evenly. "Another notch in Degrassi's belt? It'd just make _you_ look bad."

Simpson narrowed his eyes. Sighed. "I'm worried about what happened to you over the summer, Mr. Novak."

Zig flinched at this, slightly, but recovered quickly. Gasped, a little, for effect.

"What? Does the haircut not bring out my eyes?"

Detention wasn't enough, Simpson told him. Detention wouldn't do any good for the boy who'd left grade nine with bangs in his eyes and a steady B-average, only to roll into grade ten with a leather jacket and matching attitude problem. Zig needed time, Simpson said, to rediscover who he was.

"You're lost. That's not okay."

That's what Simpson didn't get: when the darkness and the anger had finally spilled out, stained everything, it was a relief. When people looked at Zig, they finally saw the truth.

Zig wasn't lost. He was finally fucking free.

* * *

The last time he saw Tori was in The Dot, and it wasn't on purpose.

He wanted to surprise his mom with one of their overpriced, fancy lattes. She'd never waste that kind of money on herself, and would scoff when he handed it to her over the counter, but he hadn't seen her smile in months. He was getting a little desperate.

Tori was at a table by the window, alone, journal open, pink pen falling out of her hand, big eyes gazing out at the street. He wasn't sure if he was allowed to approach, but he did anyway.

"Tori…. Hey." He startled her out of something, the pen hit the floor with a clatter. She hurried to pick it up, probably grateful for the excuse not to look him in the eye. He blazed past it, forced a smile. "How are finals going?"

"Oh, um, fine! Good. I'm done, basically."

"Oh, lucky." A long pause, as he slowly realized that if this conversation was going to continue, he'd have to force it. "So are you here to just, like, watch everyone else study and rub it in their faces?"

She laughed, a little. Thank God. "Not really. I'm just…" She trailed off, looked back to the window. Dramatically, because that's how Tori did everything.

"What?"

"Saying my, um. Goodbyes. Sort of."

"Goodbye to…. The Dot? It's not going anywhere." Suddenly, fearfully, he felt very stupid. "Is it?"

"No, but. Um. I am."

"You're going to Paris, too?" he asked, barely able to mask the jealousy in his voice. That trip cost more than his family paid in rent in a year.

"No, no… I'm moving. My family, that is." Able to sense his shock, she hurriedly covered, "I should have told you, it's just that my dad just got this random promotion and it all kind of came out of nowhere..."

He didn't really know what to say, so he just went with the obvious: "Where?"

"Ottawa."

He'd never been there. He'd never left Toronto. "Oh, cool?"

"Yeah. It'll be- nice. To have a fresh start. Not that I won't miss, you know, everyone-"

"Yeah…" Zig coughed, looked to his feet. "It's been a weird semester."

"You could say that," she said, weakly.

There wasn't anything left, really. Zig nodded. Cleared this throat.

"I hope you, um, have a nice time-" he offered.

"Yeah, you too-"

"-and, uh, I guess-"

"-keep in touch?" They said, in unison, stilted and nervous. Both fully aware that it was probably a lie. But they had to say it, anyway.

It was Zig's fault, that everything was so off between them. He'd hurled a grenade into directly into the heart of whatever he and Tori had shared, he knew this. He didn't regret it, necessarily; he loved Maya. Or liked her? Or whatever. But, then, in the Dot, beads of condensation dripping down his mom's rapidly melting frappacino, looking down at Tori and her sparkly journal filled with pink cursive: he wished he had more to say. He wished it didn't have to end like this.

But: she deserved more. She deserved more than him.

Tori stood up, arms open. They hugged. It was super weird. But he appreciated that she bothered at all.

"I hope-" Tori trailed off, biting her lip. "I hope you and Maya are really happy together, okay? I really do. I mean it."

"Listen, we're not-" He paused. He certainly fucking hoped they were. "Thanks."

* * *

When Zig got back to the store, the OPEN sign in the front had been flipped to CLOSED- at 4 o'clock on a perfectly normal June afternoon. Zig was only sort of breathing as he hurled open the door and scanned the aisles for any signs of life: nothing.

Once, in the fall, one of the first times Zig had been deemed old enough to be left in charge, he'd gotten restless. Sitting at the counter for hours on end, swiping bar codes on beef jerky, fishing pennies out of the cash register. It was mindless, and it was stupid, so the answer was obvious: he flipped the sign to CLOSED, locked the doors, and retreated to the half-dead patch of grass out back with a blow-up beach ball he'd found in the toy aisle.

His parents found him there maybe an hour later- Zig had never seen them so angry, before or since. "We could fire you for this," his father spat out, "If you weren't our son, we would."

He'd stormed inside, leaving Zig and his mother and her sad, tired eyes.

"You're not like your friends, Zig," she told him, quietly. "You can't- you can't make mistakes, be selfish. There's no room."

So: a casual midday CLOSED sign was not normal, and not okay. Zig checked behind the store, the bathroom, panic rising. His mom wouldn't just leave, unless something was seriously messed up. He struggled with the complicated freezer door for a few long, terrible moments, throwing his whole weight into heaving it open.

His mom was there, thank God. But the relief lasted only a second- she was squatted in a corner by tomorrow's milk, shoulders shaking, head in her hands.

Struck dumb by the sound of his mother's sobs, Zig gaped at her, frozen. When she finally looked up and saw him, her face crumpled all over again: horror and tears and shame and snot. An absolute mess. Not for his eyes, but: it was too late.

"Um, Mom, is everything-?"

"Oh, honey, oh, Zig, I thought you wouldn't be home until later…"

"What's going on?"

"It's just- your father isn't back from Uncle Anto's house, yet, and he was supposed to get back to Toronto before lunch. It's- I'm sure it's nothing, it's such a long drive, he could have gotten a late start- Honestly. I'm just- you know me," She forced a half-hearted chuckle. "The sun goes behind a cloud, and I worry it'll never come back."

Zig crouched next to her, nodding, awkward hand on her back. "Of course. I'm sure it's fine. I'm sure everything's fine. He can't call you when he's, like, driving, so…"

She nodded, wiped away her tears, slowly becoming his mother again.

"Exactly," she said. Smiled. "You're a good man, Zigmund. I don't know what I'd do without you."

It stung, the magnitude of how wrong she was, but: it would take days, weeks for Zig to explain to his mother all the ways in which he was a terrible person. She was the only one left who believed otherwise, anyway; he needed that. So he helped her up, led her back to the counter, breathing sort of back to normal, but unable to shake the feeling that whatever was broken couldn't be fixed. Not this easily.

The drink from The Dot - frappucino, whatever - sat on a shelf by the door, entirely liquid, completely forgotten. It was one of the last times that summer, probably, that Zig would even bother to try and put some good into the world.


	2. Chapter 2

Author's Note: This is pretty much a direct response to Close To Me. Certain things not yet addressed, only because it ended up being more of Rubber Room Friends origin story than anything else. I'm also trying to avoid explaining the circumstances of Zig's homelessness in detail until the show gives us more clues, so thank you so much for bearing with me, here.

AND NOW:

Zig's hair was still wet from the shower, shirt basically buttoned, as he grabbed for the Matlin's house phone. He surprised himself, that he knew the number by heart - although it was more due to necessity than pure friendship, as he hadn't had a steady place to store his contacts since his phone plan had run out in August.

He picked at a spare thread on the couch as he waited for her to pick up. If she let it go to voicemail because she didn't recognize the number, Zig swore to God-

"Yello?"

"Grace!"

"Zig? What's this number?"

"Maya's."

"Ah. Should have guessed. How's life at the love shack, anyway?"

"Fine. Good. Uh-"

She chuckled. "What do you want, weirdo?"

"Will you go to the, um. Dance. Semiformal. Whatever. With. You know. Me?"

On the other end of the line, Grace howled.

"Oh, come on. Not like that!"

"Am I dreaming? Am I drunk? I've waited for this moment for so long, and it's completely met every single expectation I've had-"

"Maya's going to be there," Zig shot back. And, with vigor: "And _Miles!" _

"You knew that this morning, and still told her no. What's different?"

Zig finally managed to rip the thread out of the couch cushion. He entwined it between his fingers, silent, for a long moment. Looked around at this living room, too fancy to be real, expensive, clean, normal- decidedly not his.

"I can't screw this up, okay?"

He wasn't sure whether he meant living with the Matlins or falling more in love with Maya than he already had or proving his dad wrong or saving up enough for a new phone or all of the above or something else, entirely. But: Grace got it, anyway. She usually did.

"Alright, fine," she shot back. Accompanied by a loud, theatrical sigh, just to keep either of them from getting too sentimental. "Meet you there in forty minutes, Romeo."

"Forty minutes? Seriously?" Zig checked the clock on the mantle. "The thing starts in twenty."

"And you asked me to go with you precisely ten seconds ago. I need to decide which of my black tee-shirts is the fanciest. Call Tiny, too! I don't want anyone to get the wrong idea about the two of us."

"But I thought you'd been waiting your whole life-"

"Whatever. Forty minutes, Zigmund. And I can't promise I won't have pregamed this bullshit."

Click. Zig grinned. He'd forgotten what this felt like. Hope?

* * *

Being poor sucked, but what he wouldn't realize until later was that it was a relief to know where he stood.

He'd gotten good, anyway, at getting around it: sitting with his friends in clothes he'd stolen from the Lost and Found, drinking a coffee he'd paid for in quarters, smiling and nodding along while they talked about TV shows he'd never seen. He was so good at faking it, sometimes, he'd forget about who he really was: come back to the convenience store with the broken lightbulbs, his exhausted mother half-asleep at the counter. The taste of the overpriced coffee, which cost as much as he made in an hour- or, rather, would make, if there was any money to pay him- would linger in his mouth as he kissed her forehead, locked the door behind him.

He'd stumble past his father, asleep in front of a screen full of static, antenna drooping. Sometimes there'd be a an empty beer on the table next to him. Sometimes, more than that.

He'd fall asleep in a mattress on the floor of a mostly-empty room. Some nights passed without incident, some a burst of stress dreams about Maya and Cam and Tori and greenhouses and green bandanas and Maya, always Maya.

Those were the problems Zig figured he'd always have: not enough pants to impress his friends and Maya Matlin. (Cam, too, but he never thought about Cam.

Except when he did.)

But then she left, and so did everyone else, and his dad was gone for four days in a row without calling and they all assumed he was dead.

He wasn't, though- he came back with a weird amount of money, too much to be just because of the last minute trucking gig he claimed Uncle Anto had gotten him. It was easier to just swallow that, though, and move on. Shut up, smile, and pretend things were as normal as they had ever been.

As hard as it had been to go to a school full of rich kids and not own a smartphone: he had no idea. What poor truly meant, and how bad it could get.

* * *

Zig brought a backpack with him to the ravine. He hadn't had a lot of time, so he didn't even really have any idea what he'd shoved in there: a few tee-shirts. Old Degrassi lanyard. Pants, underwear, a stack of comic books. Toothbrush, but no toothpaste. Deodorant. School binder. Sweatshirt. A pair of flip flops.

Fuck.

He was sitting on a log, pretty far off from the general sketchy goings on that the ravine was known for. He didn't really know how he ended up here- maybe he thought it would be like a campground? Maybe he thought Damon would be here?

He hadn't been thinking, really. He'd pretty much been on autopilot ever since he slammed the door and ran off. Kicked it once, for good measure, and here he was. No campground, no Damon, just some bonfire of losers beyond those trees and Zig and his fucking shower shoes.

The sun was still pretty high in the sky, but: it would set, eventually. Soon. Too soon. And then what the fuck was he going to do? Why hadn't he thought to grab a blanket? A pillow? Because doubling back to grab a sleeping back would have severely undercut the drama of his exit. Goddammit. His dad had probably already locked the doors, anyway.

_"You are nothing. You hear me? All you've ever done is make my life harder." _

Zig was half-crying, sort of, without realizing. He wiped the stray tears away with the sweatshirt, but it was too late:

"You realize finals are over, right?" He looked up, and there she was: blue hair, tons of makeup. Piercings everywhere. Holding a beer, eyebrow raised.

"Uh- what?"

"Your shirt, dude." He looked down and realized: he was wearing his Degrassi polo. Bright yellow, grade nine, complete dweeb. Awesome.

He hurriedly pulled the sweatshirt over his head, checking to make sure it covered the collar. "You saw nothing."

She laughed, dark and deep. But not unfriendly.

"We haven't had to wear that shit in, like, months, anyway. Pretty sure I set all of mine on fire."

"I should have done that." He stood up, slung the backpack over his shoulder. "You, um, go to Degrassi? I've never-"

"Oof. Awkward. I'm in your grade. It's Grace, by the way, since you obviously don't know."

"Wait, really?"

"Yep. Can't blame you for not noticing, when you had the two biggest princesses of the year all up on your dick."

Zig had no idea what to say to that. He pushed his bangs from his eyes. Grace took a sip from her beer.

"Sucks that girl's boyfriend died, though."

Zig tensed up. He always did. Forced himself to nod. "Um, yeah."

They stared at each other. There was some laughter, off in the distance. Grace jerked her head towards it. "Want to join? Unless you're like, meeting the blonde one to kiss with tongue and cry after, or something-"

"No. No!" Zig took a few steps towards her, frantic all of a sudden. "The blonde one - Maya - is nowhere. She's not coming. I'm just- here."

Grace grinned, and beckoned him over. They drew closer to the, uh, festivities, or whatever you were supposed to call them, and Zig almost gagged as they descended into the cloud of smoke. Hanging with princesses meant very little experience with alcohol or drugs or anything - but what did he have to lose? The pillow he'd forgot to grab?

Grace grabbed him a beer, showed him around, tipped him off when his highlighter yellow collar was sticking out of his sweatshirt. It was a party full of burnouts and weirdos and failures and losers, yeah, but maybe it was time that Zig finally admit it: these were his people.

It was reality he'd desperately avoided, as he took Tori on dates he couldn't afford, chased after a girl dating a practically-professional hockey player, ate corn dogs and did kareoke and shrugged, smiled, stopped listening.

Zig faked it until he made it, played nice, aimed way out of his league, and what had that gotten him?

Here and now: drinking a can of beer with more gusto than he'd ever managed about anything, ever. And another, and another. It was becoming clearer and clearer: he was finally where he belonged.

Bottom of the food chain, eyes watering because of pot smoke, flirting with girls who failed classes that he barely cared about.

He almost forgot about Maya, that night. About everything. For that, at least: he was grateful.

* * *

Zig stood in between Grace and Tiny, at the front steps of the school. A big banner advertising the semiformal flapped above their heads. Tiny snorted.

"You better fucking marry her, Zig. Or at least, like, fuck her."

"Shut up, you douchebag. I don't-" Zig fell short. "It's not that obvious. I'm not. That obvious."

"Oooohkay!" Grace said. "I'm just at this dance because I love group activities so much. Almost as much as I love my peers. Total fucking joiner."

"That's not a word," Zig grumbled.

"Um, totally is, Rubber Room."

"I'm there for my attitude, not my ability to know words, Simpson said it himself."

"I'm here," Tiny interrupted, "at this dumb dance, because that mayor's son seems like a total prick. It would be a relief to punch him. I'd be doing the world a favor."

They all laughed, a little. It was quiet, mostly, save for the banner, flapping.

Zig wasn't lucky in a lot of ways- which made it easier to recognize the parts of his life that weren't total crap.

"Thank you, guys," he said. "For coming."

Grace grabbed his hand and squeezed it. Seconds later, she was halfway towards the door. "I better be the groomsmaid of fucking honor at this shebang, Zig!" she called back. Suddenly, a flash of silver: "And I'm spiking the punch!"

Zig laughed, loudly, freely, and followed her up the stairs.

It was going to be a good night. He could feel it.


End file.
